


Scar Tissue

by TheJediAreGay



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bruce is a good dad, Childhood Trauma, Flashbacks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23509519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJediAreGay/pseuds/TheJediAreGay
Summary: A murder case brings back old memories for Damian and reminds Bruce that there are some things even he can't protect his son from.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Comments: 5
Kudos: 241





	Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on something that happened in the DC Elseworlds comic Kingdom Come to Ibn Xu'ffasch, who was Bruce and Talia's son. I figured it wouldn't be too far off for it to happen to Damian as well. Hope you enjoy!

“Arnold Fishman. 38 years old. Unmarried, no children. Worked as a convenience store cashier. Shot and killed last night by the GCPD.”

Bruce sits at his computer, mulling over the information in front of him. He’d been investigating a string of brutal murders, all seemingly unrelated, committed on the first and last day of every month. The M.O. changed every time. One victim was killed by disembowelment, one was burned alive, another was mauled by rabid dogs. The only thing they all had in common was the victim type; young boys, between the ages of 7 and 12. It left the GCPD in a state of frenzy, rushing to find a suspect before the current month came to a close and the new month creeped in.

The murders were something he had noticed when the death count was still low, but a pattern had not yet been established to show him they were anything more than isolated incidents that the GCPD could handle. So he shifted his focus to other, more pressing matters. When Jim Gordon brought it to him suggesting it was the work of a serial killer, he made solving the case his number one priority.

No one gets away with murdering children in _his_ city.

It took more time than he would have liked to track the murders to Fishman, but in the end it was a standoff with the GCPD that took him down. Bruce knows, however, that this is far from being over.

“Why are you concerning yourself with a closed case, Father?” Damian asks from behind him.

Bruce turns in his seat to see Damian crouched on the floor, holding a cat toy above Alfred the cat’s head for him to bat at. Bruce made the decision not to let Damian become involved in the case the second he learned Fishman was targeting young boys. He didn’t want to do field work with Robin in constant fear that his son could somehow become a target. He knows Damian is not the average 10 year old who could get snatched without any difficulty, but it was still out of the question. There are some risks that he just can’t take. Not as Batman, but as a father.

“Just because Fishman is gone doesn’t mean the case is closed,” he says, turning back around in his seat.

“An accomplice?” Damian guesses.

“Yes,” Bruce answers. “Jim Gordon gave me a flash drive that he found dropped off on his desk last week. Whoever committed the last murder filmed the whole thing, and the voice doesn’t match with Fishman’s.”

If Bruce remembers correctly, the very last killing was a rather brutal one. The child was buried alive. Each murder escalated in viciousness, all more heinous than the last. It makes Bruce’s blood boil. After so many years in Gotham, most things no longer rattle him. But violence against children will _always_ disgust him to his very core. It’s monsters like Fishman that make it difficult to hold himself back from squeezing their throats just a little bit _too_ hard.

The flashdrive is already plugged up and ready to go. Bruce presses the play button. A grainy, shaky video pops up, most likely from a body camera. It focuses on a young boy being held firmly by the man filming. The boy can’t be older than 10, with dark hair and bright green eyes.

The similarities between the child and Damian, while small, leave Bruce feeling uncomfortable.

The boy is struggling against the hands gripping his upper arms as the man keeps pushing him backwards, towards something off camera.

 _“Please stop!”_ the boy pleads, tears dripping down his face. _“Please let me go! I won’t tell anyone, not even my parents, I swear!”_

His desperate cries make Bruce’s heart clench. He’d been standing in the shadows, silently observing as police officers informed the boy’s parents that he’d been found dead. They’d both collapsed into each other, howling with sobs. Their whole world had shattered, and they would never know that their son’s last words were of them. Bruce has been there himself. _Twice_. He knows the pain better than most.

 _“Don’t care,”_ the videographer says gruffly.

With one hard shove, the boy goes tumbling backward into a 6 feet deep hole in the ground, screaming the whole way. The camera turns to the side as he grabs a shovel and begins digging up dirt to toss into the hole. The child’s screaming only gets louder, more frightened, as the hole slowly starts to fill up. One of the scoops of dirt lands on the boy’s face, falling into his mouth. He breaths it in and starts to make horrible choking sounds that make Bruce want to hurl his keyboard into the screen in rage.

Behind him, he hears Alfred the cat meowing. The cat must be displeased about something, because the meows continue to increase in volume. Usually Damian is quick to comfort his cat when it meows, because in his words, “Alfred only meows when he’s upset”. But now the animal is making noise completely unchecked, and Bruce doesn’t hear Damian doing anything about it.

He pauses the video and turns around in his chair, intending to order Damian to silence the damn creature.

Damian is still crouched down beside his cat, but the toy he’d been holding lays discarded on the cave floor. His attention is no longer on the cat scratching at his thigh, but on the screen Bruce was just watching. He stares at it with glazed over, distant eyes and a vacant expression. The color has drained from his face.

“Damian?”

If the boy heard his name being called, he shows no reaction to it.

It doesn’t take long for Bruce to guess what’s happening. Damian is in the throes of a flashback. This has only happened twice before. The first time, Bruce had been frantic, thinking Scarecrow had somehow found a way to dose him with fear gas during their brief encounter with him on their patrol that night. It wasn’t until Damian came back to reality, shaken and embarrassed, that Bruce realized what it really was. He was more prepared the second time around, but it was still disturbing to watch his son relive his worst moments knowing there was _nothing_ he could do to stop it.

It feels the exact same this time around.

Bruce gets up out of his chair and slowly approaches Damian. He doesn’t want to move too quickly as not to startle him. The same goes for touching him. If he were to put a hand on his shoulder to snap him out of it, he’s sure he’d get a knife stuck in his gut. So he does the only thing he can do; kneels down in front of him and waits for the storm to pass.

And it does pass. Gradually, the life starts to return to Damian’s eyes. He stops holding himself so rigidly, and his gaze breaks from the computer screen to look at the cat rubbing up against his legs. Confusion passes over his face. Then he glances up at Bruce and the confusion transitions to shame.

Bruce wishes so desperately that he could convince Damian that no one will think less of him for displaying what he perceives as “weakness”. But he knows his son’s habit of squashing his emotions can’t be easily undone. He spent his childhood being stabbed in the back – metaphorically and literally – every time he dared to let his guard down around anyone. All Bruce wants is for Damian to feel safe here, feel safe with _him_.

“What triggered it?” Bruce asks, quick and to the point.

Damian stays silent, his eyes glued to the floor in front of him. One hand rests on his knee and another is absentmindedly scratching Alfred the cat behind the ears. Bruce figures that’s as much to calm the cat down as it is to calm himself down. It doesn’t seem like Damian is willing to tell him what prompted his flashback. Of course, he would never _force_ Damian to tell him, but it makes him deflate just a bit. Damian doesn’t trust him enough to open up, not like he trusts Dick. Bruce knows it’s his own fault. If he hadn’t left Damian behind in Dick’s care for a whole year, maybe they would be closer. Maybe he would be willing to–

“The video,” Damian whispers.

Bruce scoots a little closer. He had assumed it had been any aspect about the video he was watching, but there were dozens of tiny details within the video itself that could have been a trigger for Damian’s flashback. It could have been a certain sound or a phrase or a sight. The fact that Damian answered at all is in of itself a miracle, so Bruce doesn’t push him for more. He waits patiently but nervously, hoping Damian gets at least a marginal amount of comfort from his presence.

Damian sighs shakily, eyes still on the ground.

“When I was 5 years old, Grandfather forced me to undertake a year long vow of silence,” he begins. “It was to teach me patience, and how to fight alongside others without being able to communicate with them. It was one of my more… difficult tasks. I had to constantly remind myself not to speak, every moment of every day. It was exhausting. And 3 months in…”

His hand stills in the middle of petting the cat’s head.

“I spoke to one of my tutors. I do not remember what I said. It was something simple. I think I responded to a question that I suppose was meant to be rhetorical. I should have known better. Grandfather always had eyes everywhere. He always knew what I was going to do before I did it. Sometimes I thought he was God.”

Bruce’s jaw clenches thinking about what life must have been like for Damian, growing up with Ra’s constantly looming over him. Not for the first time, he berates himself for not _knowing_ , not finding out about Damian until it was far too late to spare him from these sorts of memories.

“He had some of his men drag me out of my quarters in the middle of the night. They must have taken me 5 miles out before they brought me before Grandfather. He was standing next to a freshly dug hole.”

_No._

The direction the story is going in becomes painfully, _horrifyingly_ clear. Bruce doesn’t want to hear it. Hearing it would make it true. He wants to clamp his hands over his ears like a child so he can block out what he knows will be a gut-wrenching tale. But he can’t. He needs to listen, for Damian’s sake.

“They pushed me into the hole. Grandfather told me this was to be my punishment _and_ a test. He wanted me to crawl my way out.”

Bruce’s anger towards Ra’s quickly turns into a deep, deep hatred. It burns in the pit of his stomach, rising into his throat and threatening to escape in a shout of rage. To do that to his grandson, his own flesh and blood… he’s an even bigger monster than Bruce thought possible.

“Then they started to fill the hole with dirt. I-I panicked. I screamed at them to stop. I begged Grandfather to _make_ them stop. But they would not cease piling dirt on top of me.”

His voice drops into a whisper, sounding so much like a scared little boy that it knocks all of the air out of Bruce’s lungs.

“I learned how to crawl my way out of a grave that night.”

Bruce feels as though he’s been shot in the chest. This happened to his son. To his _10 year old son_. And he hadn’t even been 10 when this had happened, not that it would have made it any better. He was 5 years old. He had practically been a baby.

His mind is assaulted with images of his tiny son, even tinier than he is now, having dirt piled on top of his little body. He can hear the desperate choking sounds as he aspirates the dirt, hurriedly trying to get the air back into his lungs so he can beg for his life. He can feel the panic, the confusion, the utter _terror_ he must have felt thinking, _I’m going to die, I’m going to choke to death out here and no one is going to come rescue me_.

He may vomit. His stomach is threatening to expel its contents right there onto the floor. He can’t take it, can’t take the images it conjures up. To think something so depraved and _vile_ happened to his boy breaks his heart in two, leaving it lying in that make-shift grave with him. He wants to curse Ra’s al Ghul, the League of Assassins, and whatever God may exist for making his son live through things no one should ever have to endure. Damian deserves so much better. He deserves the world, and he’s instead gotten all the worst parts of it.

 _I should have killed Ra’s when I had the chance,_ a rogue voice whispers from the back of his mind.

If only Bruce had found Damian earlier. He should have known Talia was lying when she said she lost the baby. He’d been trained to detect deception better than any police officer can. How did he not realize it? What kind of father is he? He left his boy to be raised in Hell.

“Damian…” he breathes out.

What can he say? There’s no way to fix this. This memory is a scar that Damian will carry for the rest of his life. It will never, _ever_ go away. He’ll keep having flashbacks and nightmares about this event and a litany of other horrific memories that stained his entire childhood. Bruce will never be able to save him from it, no matter how much he wishes to.

And _God_ , does he wish to. He yearns to take the heavy burden of trauma off the boy’s shoulders so he can smile more and laugh with his siblings and exude the innocence that only a child can possess. All things that have been robbed from him. If he could carry Damian’s pain himself, he would do it in a heartbeat. His love for his son is boundless. He’d die for him over and over again without a single ounce of hesitation, but this is one thing he can’t do for him.

The only thing he can give him is the love and reassurance he so desperately needs.

“Damian, you didn’t deserve that. That was in absolutely _no way_ your fault.”

 _The boy absorbs guilt like a sponge,_ Dick once told him. _He believes every bad thing that happens to him is because of a personal failure._

“I shouldn’t have broken the vow,” Damian hisses. “I was trained to be better. It should have been easy to keep. But I broke it, so I suffered the consequences.”

The vitriol in his voice is a feeble attempt to hide the pain. It’s a habit of Damian’s; every unsavory emotion he feels is masked with anger or indifference because that’s what kept him alive during his childhood. Bruce used to be unable to see it. He used to get angry right back at him. It baffles him now to think he never looked hard enough at his son to see through the shields he put up. The way he treated Damian when they first met is not one of his… finest moments.

Bruce reaches out hesitantly, settling a hand on Damian’s knee. He doesn’t want to alarm the boy in his already jumpy state, but Damian doesn’t flinch away from his touch. _A good sign,_ he thinks.

“You were a child, and they expected things from you that even the most disciplined of adults would find nearly impossible,” Bruce says gently. “What they did to you was not training, it was torture. And you did nothing to deserve that. Do you hear me, Damian Wayne? _You didn’t deserve that._ ”

The words seem to hit him harder than Bruce expected. Tears glimmer in his eyes, stubbornly refusing to fall. His lip quivers ever so slightly and it reminds Bruce of his other children. That was always a tell-tale sign from all of them that the tears were going to start falling. All of them have cried in front of him before, sometimes for minor reasons and sometimes for devastating losses. Not Damian, though. Damian doesn’t allow himself to cry. It doesn’t take a detective to assume that crying is something he would have been punished for during his time with the League.

Bruce gently rests his hands on Damian’s shoulders, gazing directly into his eyes.

“You are a good person. You deserve so much better than what you’ve been given, better than what _I_ can give you. I promise you, you’ll always be safe here with me.”

He squeezes Damian’s shoulders.

“I love you.”

And with that, the dam breaks. Damian dives head-first into Bruce’s chest, small arms wrapping around his waist. For a split second, Bruce is too shocked to react. However, it doesn’t take long until he’s holding Damian in his arms, a hand snaking up to cradle the back of his head. He can feel the boy’s tiny form trembling almost imperceptibly with sobs.

 _This is a good thing,_ Bruce thinks. _He’s finally relieving some of the hurt he feels._

Of course, a hug and a crying session can’t even begin make up for a stolen childhood, or erase the scars that Damian carries. But scar tissue only becomes thicker and stronger over time. One day Damian will stop blaming himself for his trauma.

For now, Bruce is content to just hold his son for as long as he needs.

The case can wait just a bit longer.


End file.
